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People outsource their critical thinking all the time, but with computers the failures are more egregious. There is less recourse to correct things, and informa

by bostik 3y ago

People outsource their critical thinking all the time, but with computers the failures are more egregious. There is less recourse to correct things, and information propagating through systems can make the error more persistent. Also: people take the verdict from a computer as a given even when reality and computer disagree. I've used this story a couple of times before on HN, and if it hadn't happened to mother's coworker, I would have thought it a preposterous joke. Mom's colleague was buying something during her lunch break, and had her card rejected. Got the same result in another store, so obviously thought her card had just broken. Went to her local bank branch to ask what's wrong. The clerk took the card, looked up from her screen and against the evidence in front of eyes declared: "You are dead." Once that kind of flag starts to make its way through our computerised systems, it is very difficult to reverse. It took several weeks to get the error corrected, and in the meanwhile other systems that trusted the bank as a source of truth had picked up the information and started to apply it to their accounts. Eventually it came to light that a full namesake's estate had had their accounts finally closed, and the clerk doing that had done only a name search when applying the "account terminated, owner deceased" flag to the accounts. Bank never took responsibility for their process failure. They fought for a good time to even have to accept that there had been an error in the first place. Which incidentally is not entirely unlike the situation in this perversion of justice.

RetroTechie 3y ago
"Which incidentally is not entirely unlike the situation in this perversion of justice." So true. I went through the Wikipedia article, and couldn't escape this feeling: 1) Some errors were made (faulty IT system). 2) Handling of said errors expands enormously into various reports, IT vendor denying their system is faulty, legal proceedings, criminal convictions "tainted" & overturned, etc. To the point where original errors almost seem irrelevant within the bigger frame of subsequent events. Imho all the mistakes were made in the processes concerning 2), and 1) is a tiny side-show at most. IT systems can fail, period. What matters is how that's handled.
citizenpaul 3y ago
I had a similar experience as your moms colleague. I transferred 20k from savings to checking. During the process I think what happened is the web banking page froze and allowed me to hold the enter key on confirm that repeated several times. I ended up with 200k in my account that came as a negative 180k balance to my saving account sent to my checking account. (values rounded for story simplicity) This meant that not only did their online portal not have controls to make sure that internal money transfers are confirmed before processing. They also had no controls to make sure that when an internal transfer is done that the money is there to be transferred. I waited a couple days expecting a call. Nope. At the end of week I call them. Get transferred around a bunch. The whole time everyone is saying everything is good nothing is wrong, there is no problem. I 100% certain every single one of them was lying through their teeth while they go the FBI on the phone because of the automatic assumption that the computers are right and I am automatically a criminal. There is no way all those people saw a -200k balance in a saving account and thought it was fine. (BTW that means it is standard bank policy to lie to a customer when something is wrong) So what happened. They immediately zeroed my accounts and froze all my bank activity for three months while they "investigated" Then they only returned 15K of the original 20k that I moved so they effectively stole 5k from me. I spend another 6 months trying to get that money back and did not succeed. I would have been screwed if I had not been born poor and was familiar with the banking system corruption. I have my income,spending,saving and investing split among different banks and banks accounts in case of something like this ever happened. The bank initials are WF.
- jonjacky 3y ago
  Here is a posting[1] from a thread about a somewhat related experience with a bank more than 30 years ago, from the RISKS Digest, 1988: "Someone, in this case a customer though in other cases it has often been an employee, complains that something is badly amiss with some system, receives no redress, and finds that their reports are ignored. ..." 1. http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/7.09.html#subj1 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/7.09.html#subj1
- ploxiln 3y ago
  +1 to the advice to have different accounts with different banks. I've done this for a bit over 10 years now: checking account at one bank, savings at a different bank, credit card at yet another different bank, yet another credit card at yet another different bank, joint checking account with spouse at yet another different bank ... My spouse did run into some nonsense some years ago due to her checking and savings accounts being at the same bank and automatically linked and mixed-up. Banks are always offering you super convenient awesome features with "protection" and "connection" and just PLEASE NO - that's how one mistake, that was that bank's in the first place, takes down all your available funds. You'll probably get most back, eventually, but do you really want to live with that for some weeks/months ...

by bostik 3y ago

RetroTechie 3y ago

"Which incidentally is not entirely unlike the situation in this perversion of justice." So true. I went through the Wikipedia article, and couldn't escape this feeling: 1) Some errors were made (faulty IT system). 2) Handling of said errors expands enormously into various reports, IT vendor denying their system is faulty, legal proceedings, criminal convictions "tainted" & overturned, etc. To the point where original errors almost seem irrelevant within the bigger frame of subsequent events. Imho all the mistakes were made in the processes concerning 2), and 1) is a tiny side-show at most. IT systems can fail, period. What matters is how that's handled.

citizenpaul 3y ago

I had a similar experience as your moms colleague. I transferred 20k from savings to checking. During the process I think what happened is the web banking page froze and allowed me to hold the enter key on confirm that repeated several times. I ended up with 200k in my account that came as a negative 180k balance to my saving account sent to my checking account. (values rounded for story simplicity) This meant that not only did their online portal not have controls to make sure that internal money transfers are confirmed before processing. They also had no controls to make sure that when an internal transfer is done that the money is there to be transferred. I waited a couple days expecting a call. Nope. At the end of week I call them. Get transferred around a bunch. The whole time everyone is saying everything is good nothing is wrong, there is no problem. I 100% certain every single one of them was lying through their teeth while they go the FBI on the phone because of the automatic assumption that the computers are right and I am automatically a criminal. There is no way all those people saw a -200k balance in a saving account and thought it was fine. (BTW that means it is standard bank policy to lie to a customer when something is wrong) So what happened. They immediately zeroed my accounts and froze all my bank activity for three months while they "investigated" Then they only returned 15K of the original 20k that I moved so they effectively stole 5k from me. I spend another 6 months trying to get that money back and did not succeed. I would have been screwed if I had not been born poor and was familiar with the banking system corruption. I have my income,spending,saving and investing split among different banks and banks accounts in case of something like this ever happened. The bank initials are WF.

jonjacky 3y ago
Here is a posting[1] from a thread about a somewhat related experience with a bank more than 30 years ago, from the RISKS Digest, 1988: "Someone, in this case a customer though in other cases it has often been an employee, complains that something is badly amiss with some system, receives no redress, and finds that their reports are ignored. ..." 1. http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/7.09.html#subj1 http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/7.09.html#subj1
ploxiln 3y ago
+1 to the advice to have different accounts with different banks. I've done this for a bit over 10 years now: checking account at one bank, savings at a different bank, credit card at yet another different bank, yet another credit card at yet another different bank, joint checking account with spouse at yet another different bank ... My spouse did run into some nonsense some years ago due to her checking and savings accounts being at the same bank and automatically linked and mixed-up. Banks are always offering you super convenient awesome features with "protection" and "connection" and just PLEASE NO - that's how one mistake, that was that bank's in the first place, takes down all your available funds. You'll probably get most back, eventually, but do you really want to live with that for some weeks/months ...